there is a plowed fire line near he can at once get busy on the main job. 



Some people of eminent position still carry the notion that fire lines 

 are run with the idea that they stop the spread of fires by interposing 

 an area from which combustible material has been removed. They do 

 stop grass fires, but woods fires leap a 16-foot barrier with awesome 

 ease. 



The theory of the fire line is that it serves as a ready-made base 

 of operations for the fire fighter and the theory works out, as one 

 can see for himself by looking at burnt-over tracts. Only a few weeks 

 ago a 10-acre fire that started in one of the oldest plantations on the 

 Higgins Lake Reserve burned up to a fire line for a long stretch 

 along the line, and there the ground was black and tree trunks charred. 

 Sixteen feet away, on the other side of the line, stretched the forest 

 without a trace of having been scorched. 



ONLY ONE FOREST EQUIPPED. 



A complete fire line system for the state's forests, in the plans of 

 the Public Domain Commission, comprehends a line along the' 

 boundaries of "every 40-acre tract within the reserve. But one forest 

 has been thus completely equipped to date, but it is the only forest 

 reserve in the United States that is. This is the Fyfe Lake Reserve 

 of 7,182 acres area, 1,202 acres planted. The fire line mileage criss- 

 crossing this forest totals 105 miles. 



It costs from $100 to $150 a mile to run fire lines in the state's 

 forests. It would cost about the same were it conceivable to run fire 

 lines through the vast areas of fire country outside the reserves. The 

 total would run into many millions, even were the section lines only 

 followed. Nobody thinks of such a thing. Slash disposal and running 

 of fire lines "to break up the most dangerous areas of slash," as 

 Filibert Roth has put it, is the most in contemplation. When forests 

 actually are set on the barrens, in the years to come, they doubtless 

 will be protected by section and quarter-section lines. 



The regulation forest fire fighting organization contemplates 

 watchmen, patrolmen and smoke chasers. Watchmen in towers or 

 stationed on hilltops spot smoke clouds and report. Patrolmen go 

 about looking for fires, educating people on fire prevention and 

 enforcing the fire laws. Smoke chasers go after the fires and put 

 them out, calling in help when needed. The tools of the fire fighters 

 are watch towers, telephone lines, grubhooks and shovels, and fire 

 lines. 



There is at least one watch-tower in each of the opened state 

 forests, in three of them two towers each. These last are Houghton 

 Lake, Lake Superior and Presque Isle. Phone lines from each com- 

 municate with the custodian's office in that particular forest, and 

 thence to the outer world. It costs $100 a mile to put up these 

 telephone equipments, where poles have to be erected. In some of 

 the forests the lines hook up with other systems as on Lake Superior 

 Reserve, where there are arrangements wit'h the United States Life- 

 Saving Station on the Lake Superior shore within the limits of the 

 state reservation. 



STATE HAS DIFFICULTIES. 



How much of the system in practice on the state reservations is 

 applicable for the protection of natural growth and the propagation 

 f replaced growth on the millions of state-owned and private-owned 

 outside the reserves, the reader can easily figure out for himself, with 



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